Reddit's CEO says Google's AI Mode does not drive traffic, and Reddit is shifting toward a logged-in experience

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said on the company's third-quarter call on October 29 that Google's AI Mode does not drive traffic, and that Reddit will shift toward a mostly logged-in experience. In his words, "AI Mode does not drive traffic. Not for us, and not to anybody as far as I know."

Reddit's shareholder letter says search referrals fell by more than 1 million per week on average in October after a third quarter in which they were "down meaningfully." It warned that if the rate of decline continues, daily active uniques could fall in the fourth quarter by a low double-digit percentage from a base of about 130 million. Global daily uniques held at 130.3 million, while the U.S. figure fell from 53.2 million to 50.7 million, driven by logged-out users, according to Search Engine Journal.

The business side is strong. TechCrunch reports revenue rose 53 percent to $895 million and net income rose 74 percent to $283 million. Logged-in users drive more than 80 percent of monetization, 24/7 Wall St. reports, which is part of why Reddit is leaning that way. Huffman said Reddit will begin fully testing a logged-in-only experience in select markets outside the U.S. this quarter, adding "This is a test, but we are going to make this transition." Reddit has not said which countries or when a wider rollout would come.

Huffman blames Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode as the biggest part of Reddit's hypothesis, with machine-translated content ranking lower as a second factor outside the U.S. He said "Google is crawling us as hard as ever." A login wall would also make scraping harder, and he answered "For sure" when asked. Reddit has licensing deals with Google and OpenAI and has sued Anthropic, Perplexity and others, and Huffman said talks on licensing are active with nothing to announce.

For developers and anyone who publishes on the web, this is a data point on referral risk. A site that depends on search clicks can lose them quickly when answers appear on the results page. Reddit's move also affects builders who rely on public Reddit pages for research or data, since more content may sit behind accounts.

Next to watch is the international login test and the fourth-quarter report, which will show whether casual visitors become logged-in users. Reddit has not shared conversion data yet.

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